No need to tell you who buxom Nancy's daddy was I hope? She grew up around stars like Elvis and the Rat Pack and all sorts of stellar talent and was signed in the early 60’s to Ol’ Blue Eye’s Reprise label. Success eluded her in the states but she gained a popularity in Europe and Japan that is still strong. She struggled for a hit in the USA and Reprise was about to drop her when things began to change for her after she met songwriter, arranger and producer Lee Hazelwood. Svengali and business whiz, Hazelwood redid not only her image into a chic mid-60’sLondon look but even convinced her to change her singing style and in 1965 she hit the American charts with the sexy and catchy These Boots are Made for Walking (a line from a western with her dad and Dean Martin). She went on to have a string of hits all arranged and led by Billy Strange. Another really big hit from this period is the duet with Hazelwood called Some Velvet Morning and it is a truly unique and slightly psychedelic little pop song. It sounds more like something from the Pink Floyd period with Syd Barrett than a top-40's radio hit from Frank Sinatra's little girl. THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING She went to do the really good Bond theme for You Only Live Twice and it is one of the better Bond scores in my humble opinion, but I have hardly seen any of the Bond movies since Live and Let Die. She did some acting during the late 60s and starred along side her pal Elvis in Speedway. She was only singer to have a song appear on an Elvis album while the King was still alive. She would go onto to typify the look and sound of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Her career continued on and she still tours and performs, and when she was 54 she posed for Playboy and looked pretty good in a still innocent sort of way. She was sexy but in a safe and sweet way. The picture I included of her gazing at her own reflection in her underwear would be utterly different if it were Madonna. A good fan site based out of the UK is: http://www.movinwithnancy.fsnet.co.uk/contents.htm Born Thomas Jones Woodward, who later under advise from manager Gordon Mills changed his name to Tom Jones, was born in Wales and had a rough time getting his raunchy, sexy voice heard over the British airwaves in his early career. I remember watching the This Is Tom Jones TV show when I was a wee lad with my mom and he had all these strange stars from the time like Joel Gray and Petula Clark on there. He always opened with his break though hot song It’s Not Unusual and the gals in the audience just went nuts. In the late 60’s he recorded less and performed more and his shows in Las Vegas were famous for having hotel keys and panties thrown up on the stage. He made friends with Elvis while there and the friendship lasted until the King’s death. WHAT'S NEW PUSSY CAT? Like Nancy Sinatra he also did a great Bond score for Thunderball. It is my 2nd favotite Bond score after You Only Live Twice. There is no doubt that Jone’s act was head of its time in the sexual tension department, but he retained some style and class in his tuxedo’s and short curly hair style. I recall reading about his studio and TV show guitarist Jim Sullivan. Seems there were two Jims in the mid-sixties doing all the studio work in London really, Big Jim Sullivan and another chap nick named Little Jim to distinguish the two. Little Jimmy Page would give up the safe world of the studio and join The Yardbirds and later form Led Zeppelin. Page was supposed to have sat in some Tom Jones sessions and maybe did some tracks for Its Not Unusual but I am not sure how accurate this is. Jone’s charisma is still alive and in 2000 released the album Reload, and it became the biggest seller of his career to date.
YOU GIRLS A BUNCH OF NUDISTS OR YOU JUST SHORT OF CLOTHES I was finally able to locate a decent quality trailer for Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! on youtube.com. I had a really nice one posted much earlier and the video was removed for some reason and I have held out until another good one came along. On a Russ Meyer note I picked up a copy of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls here in Beijing, along with Jess Franco’s Venus in Furs on the same day, and you can expect comments on them soon. Still one of the great cult classics of all time and Meyer’s best film by far. It is mythic in it rendering and the scenes are like b/w comic book panels with tough hitting comic book dialog that never ceases to titillate and tantalize . The acting and production is amazing(Meyer's directed, edited and photographed it all) and while the movie is utterly unbelievable and even absurd on most levels it never stops drawing you into its surreal and dangerous world. I managed to down load a copy from online. Very good quality really. Amazingly this movie bombed at the box office and did much worse than some of Meyer’s more inferior works. Maybe the mid-sixties was not ready for these tough talking and tougher acting gogo dancers who broke the necks of nerdy hotrod racing wannabes and threw switchblades into each other’s backs during arguments. In any case as time and social attitudes changed the movies became the hit it should have been when it was released. A last note is about the poster and publicity stills for this film. Who is this guy’s neck she is always breaking in the stills and posters, because is not the same guy in the movie. It is sort of weird really. The guy in the film is a wuss in plaid shorts who got in one good blow to Varla’s gut before she rearranged his spinal cord for him. A clip of the neck break scene in posted somewhere in the Café for your viewing pleasure.
Black Sunday (La Machera del Demonio) was Mario Bava’s first fully directed film. Prior to this 1960 film he had worked as set designer and cinematographer primarily, but also as a replacement director (receiving no credit) for a couple projects. The story is reputedly based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol but Bava apparently took great liberties with his retelling. Bava was a lover of Russian literature and the only thing that seems to reflect the story is the setting of the tale in Moldavia and the resurrection of a dead witch. The plot is pretty basic and has been done a million times since then. A witch is burned at the stake and in her dying moments swears a curse on the descendents of the towns people, a curse she eventually begins to fulfill after her entombed corpse is revived with the blood of a vampire hunter. This may be one of the first movies though to use this theme so it was fresh territory back then. That trifle aside the film is a beautiful work and for the time the violence caused quite a stir, causing the film's release to be delayed for years in Britain (as The Mask of Satan) and in America having several prime scenes trimmed. Lovely Barbara Steel has the spiked door of an iron maiden slammed on her face causing blood to shoot towards the camera and rather than have a stake driven through a vampire’s heart Bava opts for the less traditional method of driving it through the beast’s eyeball. For the time it was quite new for American matinee audiences to see such scenes. AIP had distribution rights for the film in the US and most of their fare was the cheesy sci-fi and formula American horror material of the day, mutant bugs and mad doctors mostly. They cut over three minutes of violence from the movie before release. BLACK SUNDAY aka THE MASK OF SATAN The film is shot in moody and sharply contrasted black and white and the look is a tribute to the glory days of Universal’s atmospheric horror classics. Bava wanted some one special to play the lead role. British actress Barbara Steele had only had a couple minor roles prior to playing the witch Asa in Black Sunday and Bava was attracted to her “strange type” of beauty and she was selected from a set of photos he saw. She was purportedly difficult to work with and a wee bit xenophobic and even paranoid, at one point being convinced Bava was using a special film stock that would make her appear naked when developed. In fairness Steele was only nineteen years old and far away from her home in England. She spoke no Italian and worked under harsh budget restrictions. She never saw the completed script at any time and was given her lines and instructions each morning just before going on the set. She would go on to work with Bava again so things must have been suitable enough. She would also make a large number of films in Italy and generally became type caste as an Italian gothic horror queen (a title she later resented) and many people questioned why an ‘Italian” actress would change her name to an English sounding one. I have read some harsh reviews of this film online but dismiss them all. This is great little movie. Even if you just turn the volume off and look at it with some music you like it is stunning and lovely to behold. I wish Bava had done a few more black and white works like this. There are two versions of this film out and I have seen both. The purely Italian version called I Tre Volti Della Paura and the AIP version called Black Sabbath (which by the way is where the band got its name). There are some significant differences in the order the short films are played, some deleted scenes and plot changes in The Telephone and removing Karloff’s distinctive narration and introduction to each episode. While I like the Italian version and in particular because of The Telephone story which in the purely Italian version becomes less a supernatural story and more a crime story with lesbian overtones, I have seen the AIP version so many times that is what I am used to. Made in 1963 the film is a trilogy of stories that are claimed to based in part on stories by Chekhov and Tolstoy but no one has yet to discover exactly which stories the film scripts are based on and it is likely the names were used by AIP to give a literary quality to the movie, as they had done with Roger Corman’s Edgar Alan Poe films of the same period. It is beautifully filmed movie with good acting and not a bad score for the time. Bava's use of color is lavish and has recieved some criticism that it is overblown and unrealistic, but I do not get the same feeling. It is wonderful to behold and some parts of The Wurdulak are similar to the lush scenes Bava filmed for Hercules in the Haunted World (there is a clip from Haunted World somewhere in the Cafe). BLACK SABBATH/ITALIAN TRAILER I have been reading reviews of Bava on the net and gather some that people really do not like the guy’s collective work. I do not like everything he did and find some of his later films have a low quality to them, that begin to look contemporary rather than timeless. I think these naysayers simply miss the point or they are not swept away by his brilliant use of Technicolor or his intricate sets so prominent, for example, in the story here called The Wurdulak with Karloff. His films are artsy and European, of course, in their feel and that can be good or bad. Here it is not only good it is fantastic and if some people do not get then it is their loss. I hate people who feel elevated when they scoff at pure talent. May they all be entombed in an iron maiden for eternity! Most people’s favorite is the piece called The Drop of Water though I prefer the moody, medieval and lush The Wurdulak myself. The Drop of Water has a simple retribution plot and the ghost of the revenge seeking old lady is actually creepy for a bit. But there is drawback in that it is a modeled, grotesque dummy and after a while you want it to do something, show some expression, though it is unnerving for the lack of expression as well. It is a great, timeless movie not bereft of a few flaws. Seems some people miss the really big picture by concentrating on creative flaws which someone like Bava would have, considering his preference for small budgets and therefore more creative freedom and less corporate scrutiny. Now I have a twinge of regret at my harsh words towards Dario Argento in my post on Jenifer, as both Bava and Argento worked in the genre known as "giallo" or Italian suspense theater and literature. Similar to our pulp fiction culture. After reading a few negative remarks about Bava I wish I had been gentler on his devotee Dario. His films still confuse me, but they are not without merit now that I think about it, otherwise why would I have seen almost every one he ever made. More about giallo and Bava's and Argento's contributions to it in a future post. But for every ounce of spite there is a pound of praise for his work, and for the next one in particular, which was Bava's darkly, visionary foray into the world of science fiction. Bava did a curious and eerie science fiction movie in 1965 called Terrore Nello Spazio and it is translated as Planet of the Vampires, although the protagonists here are more like zombies than actual blood drinking vampires. AIP, having achieved some fair success with previous Bava films and Italian horror-fantasy films in general, took a more active role in the production of this and subsequent films out of Italy. Not only did they pay for distribution rights but film legends Samual Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson co-produced the film as well and thus had more say over the general creative process. Over time this new type of closeness with cooperate higher ups would make Bava bitter and drive him away from AIP. Some people have criticized the film for it low production values and in particular for the use of cheesy miniatures. In truth it seems in this case that Bava, who usually preferred low budgets and therefore creative freedom, felt constrained by the budget for this type of film himself. He complained in one interview of the entire set consisting of two plastic rocks. “…yes, two. One and one!” Actually if you look at the clip it appears there are lots of rocks, but maybe Bava was just really upset when he made this statement and perhaps he is talking of the larger rock props. In any case the two rocks in question were left over props from another fantasy film and were essentially donated to the production. Bava uses lots of fog and filtered lighting to make up for the dismal sets and in the process created a truly eerie effect. Mirrors were used to multiply the two plastic rocks and add some depth. The film relied on mood and atmosphere over gadgets and so it is a very gloomy and gothic sci-fi film, one of the first and a good one at that. PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES The creatures, as I have stated, are more like supernatural zombies that have reanimated the corpses of previous landing parties. The creatures are spooky enough and the film is claustrophobic and tense. Some scenes were recreated in Ridley Scott’s Alien, in particular the scene of a huge dead and petrified alien in an ancient space ship. The cast was international and led by Barry Sullivan (USA) and sexy Norma Bengell (Brazil) as the Captain and chief officer of the rescue ship Argos. To further complicate matters the cast all spoke their native languages on the set and the dialog was dubbed later into either English or Italian. They often had no idea what they were saying or what directions they were being given. I have not seen the film in years really. I recall not being bothered much by the miniatures and now find it resourceful on Bava’s part. The rocket landing scenes were miniatures shot in a fish tank full of fog and crazy lighting forcing the persceptive to appear larger and closer than it is. Sure, it looks silly in a way if you are thrilled by noticing such shortcomings. I believe Bava would have wanted to do more but he took what he had and made it work and that was one of the things he had come to be respected for in not only the film community of the time but in film history as well. Mario Bava was born one day after the beginning of WWI in San Remo Italy in 1914. His father was Eugenio Bava and it was at the side of his father that Bava would learn the tricks of his trade in the world of set design and cinematography. Eugenio was a master film technician during the period of Italian silent cinema and a creator of film special effects. Mario would work for several years as his father’s assistant and apprentice. Like his highly creative father Mario was an artist who painted and sculpted and developed a fine sense of design that made him one of the great arrangers of the “mise en scene”, or what can be explained as the total scene one views in a film, as it is shot and framed by the camera. This includes the arrangement and placement of not only the actors but of all parts of the set as well as choices for color and position of props. It means in one sense that nothing you see on the screen is accidental, in the same way nothing placed on a stage for a play is accidental or random. There is no denying that at his peak Bava's stage sets were on the one hand revoultionary in regards to lighting and shading, and yet at the same time they seem to pay homeage to a bygone era of not only Italian cinema but of old Hollywood as well. His transition from set design to cinematographer was gradual and almost accidental. Bava gained not only artistic recognition behind the scenes but was seen as a man who could work fast and on a small budget as a director after he finished a small number projects that were abandoned half way through (or less)by their original tempermental directors. He received no directing credit for these films. One was I Vampiri (I Vampire). Bava was working as cameraman and optical effects designer when Riccardo Freda left the project over time disputes. Bava finished half of the 12-day shoot in only two days. A professional conflict seemed to developed between Freda and producers and Bava, who producers were beginning to favor. Freda abandoned another project after only two days of directing. Bava finished the film to the delight of producer Lionello Santi, who gave Bava the opportunity, at age 46, to direct his first film with near complete freedom. Drawing on his fascination with Russian literature he chose a short story by Nikolai Gogol entitled “Vij” to film and which Bava changed significantly into La Maschera del Demonio (translated in Britain as The Mask of Satan or as it was released in the States, Black Sunday). See the comments above for my opinions of this B/W masterpiece. Bava’s true strength rested not on his beautiful B/W work (which harkened back to the finest horror films of Universal studios) but in his unbelievably lush and atmospheric Technicolor films. His first color film in 1961 was the sword and sandal epic Hercules in the Haunted World (there is a clip available in the Café somewhere, as of this writng I am using an old template which does not support site search but will resolve that problem at the next secret counsel meeting). While as far as the story went it was a slightly above average Hercules epic it was the hallucinogenic and fantastic cinematography and camera work that made the film one of the best of the genre ever made (and believe it or not I saw this film on a fine print in a small theater in Seattle and it was lovley). He would go on to film some of the greatest color gothic horror movies to ever come out of Italy (or anywhere else for that matter) over the next few years, including I Tre Volti Della Paura (Black Sabbath) and Terrore Nello Spazio (Planet of the Vampires). See above for my personal comments on these films. Also during this period he made Blood and Black Lace and The Whip and the Body. These and a few others from this period show Bava in control of his craft and as his work became increasingly more violent and erotic conflicts developed with American International Pictures. There seemed to an issue as well with the consistently downbeat tone of his films and their endings, usually which meant the deaths of all heroes, and they were becoming viewed by commercially concerned AIP as unmarketable matinee fare. Bava did one more film for AIP I have never had much interest in seeing even though it starred one of my favorite B-actors, Vincent Price, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. His next 1966 movie, Kill, Baby… Kill!, is a stylish, nice looking film with dreamy sequences and the reappearance of a haunting looking little girl bouncing a ball that drives people to suicide. Though alow budget film it has become rather influential in its theme and technique, and directors as varied as Felleni, Scorese and David Lynch have admitted to using the film for inspiration. Money ran out for the film and towards the end and Bava, actors and crew finished the film without pay. In 1966 Bava’s father and mentor died and the distress over the loss combined with personal and professional problems Bava took a two year break from filmmaking. He returned to the process in 1968 with one of his last great stylistic films based on a European comic book called Danger Diabolik. It is an action type movie about a jewel thief and adventurer who has a bunch of James Bond like gadgets to get him out of trouble and Marisa Mell running around in some tight white hot pants to ehlp get hm into trouble. Like the other films here it has been many years since I saw this really nice looking work and it is hard to give a good comment on it from memory alone. It is one of the last movies where he used his trademark lighting and slick sets before he shifted gears and went into a series of pysho-thriller movies such as A Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969), Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) (which is credited with starting the “body count” style movies of the 70,s onward,) Lisa and the Devil (1973) with sexy Elke Summer. The films all focused on sex and violence in the 70’s Euro style but they also distanced Bava from his old techiniques and images. Twitch of the Death Nerve is basically a splatter film and considered groundbreaking, but it is also less lovely a work than what Bava had been consistently churning out prior to 1966. Bava was finding it harder to work in the mid-70’s and many of his movies were just were not receiving the attention and respect his earlier films did. They were panned as failures and compared to his more brilliant early work. He was becoming disillusioned and now spent time helping his son Lamberto’s career develop and even did set designs for Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980). In 1977 he did the very odd Beyond the Door II (a sequel of sorts of the Exorcist rip-off Beyond the Door with Juliet Mills and directed by truly awful Italian director Ovidio G. Assonitis) which wound up being Bava's last complete film. The movie is also released as Shock. I will say that Beyond the Door II was not so great a movie in my opinion and even a little unsettling even for my taste in a couple scenes, for example where a little boy develops incestuously oedipel feelings towards his mother and in one scene where they are playfully wrestling he begins to, well, gyrate on her. Kind of out there really. When I first saw it years and years ago I had no clue who Bava was then really and figured it was the work of yet another disorginzed Italian director. Some great films have come out of Italy in all genres, but some of the most atrocious have as well. Bava died of a heart attack in 1980 and while some of his latter films showed his lack of passion and vision his earlier work did it is worth noting Bava did not direct his first film until he was 46 years old, and so he is some twenty years older and disillusioned and still trying to make horror movies. Even most of his 70’s work has an entertaining quality his films from 1960 to 1966 is simply some of the best the genre has ever turned out. They are lavish and beautiful and Black Sunday has been called the most beautiful horror movie every made. His classic work is stylish and lush and loaded with beautiful, mysterious European women. He is a great director and artistic visionary.
WE WILL PERSEVERE AND OVERCOME. NO ONE, YES NO ONE ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH, WILL STOP US FROM TEACHING THE WORLD ABOUT FEMALE PRISON MOVIES OR SUPPRESS OPEN DEBATES ON EXACTLY WHO THE GREATEST CATWOMAN OF ALL TIME WAS.WE WILL NOT GIVE UP THE GOOD FIGHT!
Dance Bill Robinson! Dance! We have reason to celebrate! God Bless Apple Pie and The Uranium Cafe! Our greatest fears here at The Uranium Cafe have come true and we suddenly find ourselves the target of a vast and complicated Communist conspiracy to prevent the dissemination of valuable life altering information to the needy public. Yes, that is correct. Senator Joe McCarthy was right all along. We have found ourselves not only behind the Bamboo Curtain but our valuable cyber tramissions to the freeworld are being blocked by the Great Fire Wall of Red China. Let me be clear on this matter. The people of the PRC are a proud and noble and hardworking people and we at the Cafe acknowledge this. They have only been supportive of our efforts here to get out our message and under torture have revealed none of the whereabouts of our staff, but now we are all victims of an insidious and sophisticated Marxist technology. But by my blood we will not give up. Until they pry this mouse from my cold, lifeless hand we will continue in our efforts to bring to the world the truth about truly great men, true voices of freedom, such as Roger Corman, who brought us The Man With X-Ray Eyes and Big Bad Mamma, and Ed Wood Jr who starred in as well as wrote and directed one of the 1st great film classics about transvestitism, Glenn or Glenda. And we will not be slack in praising great film gems such as Ted V. Mikel's The Corpse Grinders or Russ Meyer's ode to the violence in women Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!. Dance little soldier girl. Dance! More grindhouse exploitation film trailers on the way. Be happy! And let us not forget to remind you we will do our best to bring you high quality images of Jungle Girls in Bondage comic book covers as well as US GIs in WWII roasting Imperial Japanese jungle fighters with flame thrower covers... these are the images that resonate the true American spirit and by Mark Twain's moustache we will not lay down and surrender. They will try to silence us, but until they put me in front of a firing squad (or just raise their voices rather loudly and glare at me in a rude way) you can always come here and find slimy Men's Magazines scans and southern USA drive in movie culture as well as sexy Bettie Page pictures and info on underground Japanese cinema. You can find all that and more but you can also find long winded pompous essays on art rock bands like Yes and King Crimson. Will we have to compromise quality and quantity? Perhaps, yes, perhaps. But we will not forget the motto on the placemats of a fine Beijing eatery: Better Read Than Dead! God Bless the USA and Shirley Temple! Dance Bill Robinson! Dance! DON'T YOU BE TRICKED INTO TRADING YOUR TREASURED FREEDOM FOR ANOTHER "ISM" Can I help, you ask? Is there some way that I, John Q.Public, can assist my fellow countrymen living in nice apartments and eating at great restuarants every night in a repressive regime spread the message of low brow western culture? Yes, as a matter of fact you can. I will sit up a link to a Swiss bank account under a false identity soon and you can contribute money, preferably in the five digit range, to there and it will help tremendously I assure you. I prefer American dollars, British pounds or Euros and if you want to give me your account number and PIN to expedite transactions that will help too. All funds will go directly to maintaining this site and helping me to travel around the world and stay in lavish hotels and nothing else I promise. Together we can move mountains! Don't worry comrade, no need to be angry. That promised post on flesh eating zombie films will be here soon. Celebrate the good tomorrow!
I am not such a student of film that I can explain why it is that the postwar period of film-making in Japan proved to be one of its most fruitful. Besides the astonishing samurai movies that came from that period there were also the touching and often tragic human drama films and the atmospheric horror films as well (and not only the great monster ones from Toho). Onibaba is sometimes classified as a horror film but if it is it is in the sense that Hitchcock made horror films as well, but it was the horror of the human mind and soul rather than ghosts and demons the characters have to deal with. Filmed in 1964 by Kaneto Shindo this film is unnerving and suspenseful with out ever being too graphic. The tone is set by incredible b/w cinematography, edgy music and excellent acting. The mood is claustrophobic as the action occurs mostly inside a large field of tall grass and reeds that is constantly undulating and swirling in the breeze and you cannot see beyond where you are at most of the time and you can never know what be laying only feet away in the tall grass. The themes are murder, lust, betrayal jealously, fears of death and insanity. How can you go wrong with this one? Also filmed in 1964, and also in stunning b/w, Horoshi Teshigahra’s Woman in the Dunes shares another quality of Onibaba’s; that is it is set in an unbearably claustrophobic situation. More so even as the drama unfolds in a huge sand pit where an educated Tokyo man is tricked while gathering butterflies for his collection into staying the night in the pit with a woman in a small hut, only to find the rope ladder he needs to exit as been removed the next day. There he is gradually forced oout of necessity into digging out buckets of sand to prevent the house from being buried as well as using the sand as a trade for food and water. The local villagers taunt him and torment him and the mysterious woman, who has long resigned herself to her fate, becomes dependent on him and infatuated with him. The mood is excruciating and it is never really explained who the villagers are or why the whole thing even happens. Rather we witness the man’s reluctant acceptance of his perpetual Sisyphus like task and even his inevitable immersion into it. The cinematography is fantastic and the acting tense and nerve racking. There is a steamy erotic quality to the film without it ever once being graphic or exploitive. Both films are masterpieces of postwar Japanese cinema and I do not have to be a film scholar to make that statement.
THE SEDUCTIVE INNOCENCE OF LOLITA AND THE SAVAGE HUNGER OF A BLACK WIDOW I once owned an autographed copy of Spider Baby by Jack Hill and gave it to my buddy Matt Gehringer when I left for China. He seemed more addicted to the film than I ever was so I hope he still has that priceless video tape. Also billed as Cannibal Orgy and The Maddest Story Ever Told and The Liver Eaters, Spider Baby is a superbly shot b/w film by Hill that was held up for four years after it was completed (in 1964) as an asset in a bankruptcy case. I have not seen the DVD version but have read on the net that the quality is much better than the video. Stars Lon Chaney Jr as the caregiver of a household of afflicted youngsters who have no qualms about murder due to a heredity disorder. I believe this was Sid Haig’s first role and he spends much of time in the dumbwaiter looking creepy. He would go on to do other Jack Hill films including Pit Stop and The Big Doll House, a women in a Filipino prison movie, where he pretends to be the weirdest gay guy ever in one scene. If you were gay would you fall for Sid Haig in any situation? If you weren't gay would you? THE FANTASTIC STORY OF THE MEN WHO PIT THEIR FLESH AGAINST THE SHREEKING OF TIRES AND THE GRINDING OF STEEL This is a really good and gritty movie about demolition derby drivers, the kind that do the figure 8 style races. It was released in 1969 and like Spider Baby is shot in effective b/w. Unlike some other hotrod movies of the time this film is really rather despairing and well done and has little of the shlocky teenage angst the other films of this short lived genre tried to convey. These are all older guys and this is their life. They are not “rebelling” they just trying to survive by making a living at the only thing they know how to do. The acting is all pretty good with handsome Dick Davalos as the brooding, silent but determined new guy to the track. Sid Haig returns to a Jack Hill production as a really edgy driver who has had his brains jostled around one too many times. There is also a fine early role by Ellen McRae. If the name does not ring a bell she would soon change her name to Ellen Burnstyn and she would become famous for her roles in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and The Exorcist. A really moody movie and one of Hill’s best.
Hello and greetings. The staff and myself here the Uranium Café are elated and proud to announce that we have reached our 100th post. There has been a definite learning curve involved in the development of the look and content of the Café and the going has not always been easy and it is not over by a long shot. The direction of the next 100 posts will be clearer we hope and the look and feel of the site will become more polished. The problem often is not what to promote and comment on but what not to. There is simply too much precious material to choose from. Much time and energy now goes into the editing of images found on the web to raise them to the high standards we promote here a the Café and more time will go into that in the future when we begin our themed photo albums. Imagine if you can a photo album of nothing but fine quality images from Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! or Jungle Girls in Bondage comic book covers. Valuable time that could be spent feeding and clothing hungry children goes into searching for good quality video trailers and clips in order to promote classic films such as Astro-Zombies, The Vampire Lovers and Castle of Blood. Expect video samples soon from Ted V. Mikel’s The Corpse Grinders and exploitaion genius Jack Hill's timeless classics Pit Stop and Spider Baby. It is not often easy to choose between my passion to eraditcate illitercy in the 3rd world or to edit pictures of strippers from the 50's and I lose a lot of sleep wondering if I've made the right decision that day, so please be understanding. There have been some set backs in the use of MP3s to promote great muscians like Glen Danzig and Jimmy Page but for the moment the site I am uploading to is relatively reliable and the files can be saved as well. There are always essays and comments in the work and there will be a new focus on film commentaries. I am working on editing a cavalcade of old comic book covers and men’s magazine covers from the days when men could be chauvinistic swine and enjoy a good exploitation magazine for a buck or less… and still get dates with hot chicks! Work is being done as well in editing older posts from as far back as post # 1 itself. We will continue to strive to bring you the highest quality postings on the wild and exciting world of cult film, comic books, pin-up girls, pulp magazine and paperback books, various types of rock music, and who the hell knows what else. For all I know we could do a post on Oscar Wilde, as queer a subject as that may be for the Café, if it tickles our fancy. And we must remember that the world that The Uranium Café honors has not always been a safe and decent world (thank God or what would I write about) and we should take a moment to reflect on times not long ago when the world was on the brink of nuclear conflagration. Please join myself and the staff here at The Uranium Cafe (named in loving tribute to the greasy spoon diner outside Los Alamos New Mexico, home of the world's first atomic bomb test) and safety conscious Bert the Turtle as we remember the good ol’ days when men were men and most knew how to arm a hydrogen bomb as well as change spark plugs on a T-Bird. Take it away Bert, and tell us how we once were taught to duck and cover before PE class...
There are some mythic elements to the life of Ingrid Pitt that is sometimes conflicting, depending on what source you are reading. There is the fantastic story of how she was born Ingoushka Petrov in 1937 to Polish parents while her mother was being transported to a concentration camp in Germany during the war. Another source keeps the concentration camp story but gives the date of 1943 for her birth, while yet another source claims Pitt herself lists her birth date as November of 1945, when the war was well over for Germany as well as Japan and the camps were abolished. YOU CAN'T GO ON KILLING FOREVER She grew up separated until the age of ten from her parents and was reunited with them later in Berlin by the Red Cross. In 1962 she escaped East Germany by swimming across the Spree River and worked as a waitress supporting herself and her daughter while pursuing a career in acting. Whatever is true, false or exaggerated only adds to her dynamic charm and charisma. She has had a few small roles in main stream films such as David Lean's epic Doctor Zhivago and Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood, but it was her work for James Carreras and Hammer films that has helped her achieve and maintain her status as a genuine cult film icon for decades now. Her ample cleavage, east European beauty and perfectly upturned nose made her a perfect Hammer scream queen. A couple of her greatest roles were as the lesbian vampire Carmilla in The Vampire Lovers (with Peter Cushing in yet another great vampire hunter role) and Countess Dracula, where she plays Elizabeth Bathory, the most prolific murderess in history and inspiration for countless b-movies and goth bands.. PERVERTED CREATURES OF THE NIGHT She has authored a couple books about her life in films and is a black belt in karate. I hope the images I found and edited do her the justice she deserves. She was one of the early pioneers of the whole Euro-Lesbian vampire movie craze that flourished in the 70's. She was a real gem and she will no doubt reappear from time to time in the Café. Check her website for more info at:
UNBEARABLE SUSPENSE AND SADISTIC TERROR The Z-movie classic Astro-Zombies comes from exploitation “genius” Ted V. Mikels, who also brought us such timeless family classics as The Doll Squad with Tura Satana and his undisputed magnum opus The Corpse Grinders. Astro-Zombies was co-written by M*A*S*H’s Wayne Rogers and it also stars as a mad scientist John Carradine who is accompanied by a classic hunch back assistant who resents his private experiments on girls strapped to tables in bikinis being interrupted by the mad doctor all of the time. The dialog (as this trailer attests to) is timeless and Tura Satana is devilishly naughty and murderous, just the way we like her.
Some people really diss this gem on the net as if it is supposed to be something other than it is: a cheap, low budjet drive-in movie shclock-fest. One cruel critic complains that he cannot keep his eyes open during viewings of it. So what! I have the same problem with The Titanic and Dances with Wolves usually and those movies won Oscars. And to be clear I love great and genuinely good movies. Those two movies are not bad movies of course in any way, they are in fact excellent movies. Perfect movies, okay. But that does not mean I prefer them over trash like Astro Zombies all of the time. Sometimes I am in the mood for a true camp classic.
I am perplexed by commentors who take what is universally accpeted as a bad movie (albeit a GOOD bad movie in most people's view) then write a review about how bad a movie they think it is. Yes... it is a bad movie! And I think I have seen Astro Zombies about a dozen times and if I had a copy here in China now I would pop it in the DVD player and have a great time with it. They just do not make bad movies like this anymore. Nowadays bad movies are just plain bad and will never, ever in a million years hold a revered position in cult film history the way Astro Zombies, The Corpse Grinders and The Doll Squad do. In a couple posts check out the trailer for Corpse Grinders I am preparing. By the way, if you research "Corpse Grinder" in some variation on the net (of course, why would anybody be seacrching the word corpse grinder in any variation on the net) you will find that that is also the name of the singer of the Grindcore Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse. Maybe I will do a post on them soon. If you are curious a little about Ted V. Mikels and Astro Zombies I refer you to an interview with Mikels about the making of the film: http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Features/ted_mikels.html
FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL! KILL! WHAT YOU GOT FOR SIN VARLA A short but good quality clip from the middle of Faster Pussycat. The b/w photography is excellent and the acting here is tough and rugged, just like the hardened vixens who are delivering the lines. I am searching for a good quality trailer online to embed the link here but so far no luck. I did have one posted in this place previously but that clip is no longer available for some reason. When a watchable trailer emerges I will get on it and post it here for you. So I changed the trailer to this pretty high quality clip from what is about the middle of the film. It is a tough talkin' scene between Varla and Linda on how to the handle the hapless hostage if she gets out of line. Great stuff.
WIDGETIZE